The best thing you can say about them is that it’s improved somewhat since the first Test. But, like the England cricket team, the TNT Sports coverage of the Ashes is still miles short of what fans deserve. God knows how many will bother tuning in on Christmas night.

Many have taken aim at the audio not being synced with the pictures, the remote commentary by non-specialists, the so-so on-air talent, the general penny-pinching, but the worst of it on Sunday was the sense that you’re being played for a fool. The coach has had the brass neck to suggest that his hopeless team had, “if anything, over-prepared” and the TV coverage has also had this weird gaslight-y quality. The unfortunate England cricket fan, slumped in front of the TNT telecast in the wee small hours, found themself saying: “Hang on a minute, are we watching the same match here?”

For Adelaide day five, Graeme Swann was playing the mindless optimism card pretty strongly and shouting “come on England”. At lunch, Becky Ives said: “England have been brilliant this morning, have they not?” and Swann – sorry, “Swanny”, because everyone on TNT is “Cooky” and “Finny” and “Ebs” – agreed that they had indeed. “England believe they can win... and a few people are starting to believe it too. Welcome aboard!” brayed Swann.

Were they being “brilliant”, though, on day five? Jamie Smith smacked a few but then cut his own throat. If you wanted an actual expert’s read-out of that pivotal wicket, here’s Ricky Ponting on Australian TV’s 7 Cricket: “Dopey, dopey, dopey. There’s another one of those moments. A new ball on this wicket, the best time in the game to bat, and you just go and throw it away.”

Steven Finn conceded at lunch “you’d say that Australia are just ahead still” but Swann shook his head. Australia were 1/12 on Betfair. You’d love to play cards with these guys, right? Ives said: “Come on! We believe! Stay with us, don’t go to bed.” Once you’re reduced to pleading with the customers, it’s not a good look.

Swann quit the 2013-14 Ashes tour when the going got tough (too much to hope that he’ll do the same for the telly work) so spare us this winners-never-say-die claptrap. The way he can’t stand still on camera, the sense that he’s not listening but just waiting for his next chance to spout off, the Archbishop of Banterbury schtick: just awful. Great shame because he was a wonderfully watchable player but is an absolute pain on the telly.

Finn seems like a good guy but, at only 36, is too close to the team set-up. He leapt to the defence of Harry Brook, saying: “If we celebrate [Brook’s approach] on one hand we are hypocrites if we criticise on the other. We cannot criticise him for playing shots that have got a lot of runs.”

This gave the sense that the England media manager has got his hand up Finny’s fundament and is operating his vocal cords, obviously with a long extendable pole, at 6ft 8in. Very on-message, very Bazball, very annoying for the viewer.

As for the commentators, to borrow from FS Trueman, I just don’t know what is going on out there. After the embarrassment when it was revealed that ball-by-ball calling was happening away from the ground, Rob Hatch has over-corrected with sledgehammer subtlety and keeps slipping in that he was “out in a Greek restaurant IN ADELAIDE the other day” and how he “met some England fans IN ADELAIDE.” As for referring to “Swanny” as “the Oracle”? Do me a favour. And given that he is – did he mention? – at the actual stadium, it is bizarre how badly Hatch struggles to follow the flight of the ball. Yesterday, it was “Ooh dear, ball in the air… thankfully from England’s point of view there is nobody in that region” and then “he’s gone again! Oh but he’s out.” Is Hatch commentating from inside a pillbox? Or, indeed, through a hatch? Has his cycling helmet slipped over his eyes?

Elsewhere, Ives asked a decent open question of her pundits, to the effect of “is it harder for Smith because his opposite number Alex Carey is having such a fine series?” But Swann just swatted that away: “Well that would just be the media comparison, he won’t be thinking about that” and it was back to the tub-thumping. TNT should make these guys aware that they are working in the media, not on some sort of England camp followers jolly-up. The gnomic Justin Langer appeared a television titan by comparison.

If TNT had not tried to do this on the cheap they could have had Ives and her merry men doing their happy-clappy bit pitch-side and then cut back to a studio for grown-ups to do analysis and deliver what the situation required and the England fans needed: an extended, no-holds-barred carpeting in the Bob Willis style that ends with Charles Colvile having to apologise to Ollie Pope’s next of kin.

You can only assume that TNT suits have told them to gas it up in a desperate ruse to keep people tuned in, but there’s a line between staying upbeat and trying to hoodwink the public. A pathetic Ashes capitulation demanded a satisfyingly brutal monstering from some legends of yore. Once again, TNT failed to hit the cut strip here and absolutely nobody is fooled.